Sam is a trained economist specialising in understanding the complexities of the South African economy. Prior to joining the EICN, Sam spent time in both the public and private sector, first as an economist within the Economic Policy division of the National Treasury, and then as a consulting economist at Econometrix, and Deloitte. During his time in private sector, Sam specialised in analysing events and government policies to dilute these into constructing business strategies. Sam also spent time in Switzerland as an economist for airline industry body IATA. Sam holds a masters degree in economics from Stellenbosch University, and has studied further at the Insitute for Social Studies in The Hague, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Levy Economics Insitute of Bard College in New York State.

Thayendran is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Emergent Africa. He has helped create new ecosystems to enable decision intelligence by combining digital strategy, next generation platforms and deep industry/data/analytics experience. He previously was the Africa Leader for ConvergeHEALTH for Deloitte and Led Accenture’s Insight Platform for SSA. He has a Master’s Degree Cum Laude in Applied Science from University of Pretoria and graduated from Harvard Business School (Business Analytics) in 2021.

Chris Wiggett is an Insights and Analytics expert, who directly engages with clients to understand the business needs, describes the outcomes of the solution, and defines and packages the unique methodology, tools, technology platforms, and software used by the organisation.
Chris has always focused on the learning of new skills which he believes will be required in the future. To this extent he has gained experience in the following fields when they were really in their infancy:
Call Centre Technology and Management
CRM
Business Development (Africa)
Digital marketing and transformation
Recently Chris has moved his obsession into the field of Advanced Analytics a field that will change business dramatically in future and one that he is ready for.
He has vast business experience and has dealt with both a lack of data historically and the current situation which is the total overload of data.
In Chris’s opinion, the increase of data available to business is really just increasing the amount of noise through a lack in relevance of the data. As the noise increases managers are losing faith in the value of this data and are reverting back to experience and intuition. The problem with this is that as the pace of business is increasing the value and relevance of both experience and intuition is decreasing.
In the last 2 years while starting the Analytics Business in Britehouse we had to build the strategy and value proposition of this new venture. In the end, this all boils down to the ability to deal with vast amounts of data and creating relevance.

Renier is the Head of Data for Sub-Saharan Africa at Pernod Ricard. Renier develops and manages the data roadmap for Pernod Ricard affiliates operating in Africa, which includes data governance, acquiring new sources of customer data, automation of data reporting tools and management of some of Pernod Ricard’s digital projects within these affiliates. Renier's focus is on the customer, and uses data to optimize sales service delivery and resources, as well as increase promotional effectiveness, and identify and target marketing activities to the correct audience segments and cohorts.

Frans Cronje currently leads a fifty-strong team of mathematicians, statisticians, and data scientists who have made it their mission to help manufacturers reach their Smart Factory ambitions. Prior to DataProphet, Frans worked as a consultant for Bain Consulting. Frans has been named one of Fast Company SA’s top 20 industry leaders under 30.